Gyumri Development Laboratory team takes first place in senior Future Innovators category at WRO 2026 Open Championship Europe
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The team from the Gyumri Development Laboratory (GDL) took first place in the senior age group of the Future Innovators category at the 2026 World Robot Olympiad (WRO) Open Championship Europe. The young Armenian innovators achieved this result with an innovative robot designed to promote accessibility and education.
Angela Baltayan, co-founder of the educational non-governmental organization Contests Lab and competition manager, told Armenpress that around 250 teams from countries around the world participated in the competition held in Zagreb, the capital of Croatia, on October 13–16. Armenia was represented by six teams. Two competed in the Future Innovators category, while four competed in RoboMission. All participants had won their respective categories at Armenia’s national stage.
The Gyumri Development Laboratory team presented a robot for automatic book scanning. It scans a book and converts its contents into different formats, including video, audio and slide presentations. The project is designed to assist people with reading and visual difficulties, as well as students preparing for examinations who have to study large volumes of literature.
According to Angela Baltayan, the idea did not emerge by chance. After noticing the difficulties faced by a visually impaired classmate at school, the teenagers decided to develop a solution to help overcome barriers to reading.
“This exceptional achievement is the result of our young innovators’ knowledge, engineering skills, creative thinking, team spirit and consistent work. In the future, if the children wish, the robot they have created could be developed into a startup and patented,” Angela Baltayan said.
This is not the young innovators’ first international success. In 2024, they also won a gold medal at an open competition in Italy with a waste-sorting project.
The team comprises Silvi Khachatryan, Elen Khachatryan and Davit Petrosyan, aged 15–16. Their coach is Ashot Zilfimyan.
The Gyumri Development Laboratory was founded in 2021. It promotes the development of children’s technological knowledge, engineering skills and innovative thinking.
The educational non-governmental organization Contests Lab is the official representative of the World Robot Olympiad in Armenia. This year marks the 10th anniversary of the organization’s hosting of the Olympiad in Armenia.